Picked up some new HRF lures to try while I was visiting Japan. I have an affinity to Daiwa HRF lures as it is rumoured that Daiwa Japan came up with the term ‘HRF’. Although from the packaging you can see that it stands for Hard Rock Fish, rather than our own interpretation – Hard Rock Fishing.
Anyway, Daiwa Japan always seems to devote some R&D time to HRF equipment each year and I like to support that. I’ve had excellent success with the Daiwa Sonic Shad from the same HRF range. So these new additions were confident purchases.
Here’s a quick description of each:
Massive Claw
Massive Claw is a 3″ creature bait with a short body suitable for smaller offset hooks. It features large, scalloped claws. Already I’m interested to see how these fish upside-down as well as the right way up. This feels like it should be a good bait for Free Rig as it should hang, with any luck.
Sonic Paddle
Sonic Paddle is another 3″ lure with a paddle, or beaver tail. There are a few other lures in Japan in this style. For instance the Tict Paddle or Claw. This Daiwa Hard Rock Fish version features a lot of articulation so should fold-up nicely when ingested by the wrasse I fish for here. Interested to see what kind of action this one has.
Gaburi Shad
Gaburi Shad is the newest of the three HRF lures featured here. A 2.9″ shad-style bait with a relaxed paddle shape and thin tail wrist, meaning this lure will have a lot of movement even at a slow pace. Which is exactly what you need from shad aimed at rockfish during certain parts of the year. The other interesting characteristic with this lure is the colour. I don’t normally pick out shads with glow colours, but rock fishing in Japan with Masa highlighted that these colours can be deadly for low light conditions, so in the basket they went!
Some of you may be staring at the strange pentagon diagram on the packet of Gaburi Shads and wondering what that is. It’s a diagram of how suitable the lure colour is for different conditions. I haven’t translated these yet, but it’s likely to include things like; night time, algae bloom, stained water and bright conditions. This was a trend I saw at the Osaka fishing show. A few brands are dispensing this kind of advice to anglers via their packaging. Good to see.